Liberman’s revenge

“Avigdor Liberman is now part of the Left,” said a fuming Netanyahu, using his worst curse word.

By STEVE LINDE
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman in the Knesset on May 29 (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman in the Knesset on May 29
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven,” according to Ecclesiastes. Although new elections in Israel are going to cost tons of money and may end up with similar results to the last round, you never really know what they augur.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had garnered the support of 60 MKs in the 120-member Knesset in the April election, and needed just one more seat to present his government to President Reuven Rivlin by the deadline of May 29. Yet Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, with his five seats, refused to budge over his insistence that Netanyahu commit to passing the Conscription Bill, which would gradually increase the enlistment of Haredi men into the IDF from about 3,000 to 6,000.
Both men were quick to point fingers at the other when the 21st Knesset voted dramatically at midnight to dissolve itself, just a month after it had first convened and 50 days after the last election.
“Avigdor Liberman is now part of the Left,” said a fuming Netanyahu, using his worst curse word. “You give him votes to the Right and he does not give his voice to the Right.”
Liberman retorted in kind. “When a man from Caesarea calls a man from Nokdim a leftist, I want to remind the prime minister that it was he who... responded to 700 rockets by transferring 30 million dollars to Hamas.”
Although the two men know each other well and neither is left-leaning, the bad blood between them boiled over when Liberman quit as defense minister on November 14, protesting Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas that he considered “a surrender to terror.”
Now they get to go into the ring again to fight in the new election on September 17. From Netanyahu’s point of view, even if he sweeps to victory again, his Sword of Damocles is the possibility of being indicted for corruption. He failed to win support for legislation that would grant him political immunity, and faces a pre-trial hearing just two weeks after Election Day.
The prime minister is likely to come under mounting pressure – including from within his own Likud party – to step down. Netanyahu, however, is a master strategist, and has shown in the past that he can outsmart even the toughest opponents.
Instead of being the kingmaker, Liberman’s revenge came in sabotaging a new Netanyahu-led government. Although he won’t recommend Blue and White leader Benny Gantz for premier, his final vengeance on his ally-turned-nemesis could be playing a role in a chain of events that could lead to the dethroning of King Bibi.
In the meantime, though, the political drama Israel is now witnessing is unprecedented, according to Dr. Ofer Kenig, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.
“This is the first time that Israel will be holding two Knesset elections in a single year,” Kenig notes. “This time, there will be only a five-month gap between the elections for the 21st Knesset and those for the 22nd.”
According to Kenig, this is also the first time in Israeli history that a candidate asked by the president to form a government has failed, and “the first Knesset that dissolved itself without having passed a single piece of legislation.”
While there is much to criticize about the Netanyahu-Liberman fight and Israeli politics in general, the latest setback does not mean that the country won’t continue to survive and thrive.
“This isn’t the end of the world, and doesn’t mark the collapse of Israeli democracy,” Kenig reassures us.
But even if the two main candidates in the next elections are still Netanyahu and Gantz, Liberman looms in the background.